Little Reunions Read online

  The garden was designed in a formal French style based on symmetry, with a narrow passageway paved with faux marble and bordered with holly trees pruned into the shape of goblets. Several roses were in bloom. It was very strange for Julie to walk next to her mother in the garden. Rachel probably sensed it too and suddenly started to talk of her own childhood. She began with the sort of homily she often gave after lunch when Julie was eight or nine years old.

  “Thinking back, in the old days, it was just so… . Your maternal grandfather died while stationed in Yunnan on official duties. He was only twenty-four. It was one of those Yunnan miasmas. When the news arrived your maternal grandmother was embroidering on a high chair with First and Second Concubine. She fainted and fell to the floor, bringing the high chair down with her. Of the three wives, only Second Concubine was pregnant.” Rachel always called her birth mother Second Concubine.

  “No one in the clan believed any of the wives were with child. They wanted to divide up the property of a branch of the family without a male heir and demand a physical examination to determine if the woman was pregnant. How could that possibly be agreed to? The clan members made such a ruckus, insisting the pregnancy was fraudulent, threatening to drive the women out and burn down the house. Some of the menfolk, Hunan soldiers who had been with your great-grandfather, surrounded the house just before the due date and set up watches at the front and rear entrances to check everyone who came and went. They even kept watch on the roof.

  “Finally Second Concubine gave birth to a baby, but it was a girl. A maid called Ling went out with a basket and bought a little infant boy from a Shantung famine refugee. She hid the infant in the basket and smuggled him into the house. The boy became the twin brother. Ling was terrified the baby would cry at a checkpoint when she came back—if her ruse had been discovered they would have shot her on the spot. On her deathbed your maternal grandmother ordered that Ling must be given special treatment, that she should be looked after for life. Your maternal uncle respected her wishes—he’s always good to Ling.”

  At first Julie could not make heads or tails of the story. After a pause she asked, “Does Maternal Uncle know the truth?”

  “No,” said Rachel softly, shaking her head.

  No wonder Third Aunt had once said girl and boy twins are rare. When Julie responded, “But aren’t Second Aunt and Maternal Uncle twins?” Judy was quiet for a second, then, with a cagey smile, mumbled her acquiescence: Rachel and her brother indeed looked alike. But whenever people said that, Judy also smiled. They are not as alike as identical twins, but girl and boy twins are apparently not really twins.

  “They grew more alike because they both suckled on Second Concubine’s milk,” said Judy. Julie later came to realize that Rachel had related this family story because she wanted to diminish the distance between mother and daughter and had let Julie in on one of her secrets. Moreover, being eighteen years old, Julie could be counted on to keep it secret.

  Julie recalled seeing a maid called Ling in her maternal uncle’s household. Ling was retired but occasionally visited her former employers, neatly attired in a black cotton jacket and trousers. Her age did not show on her round, fair-skinned face. Come to think of it, she must have once been quite attractive, and probably flirted with those old Hunan soldiers to get through the checkpoint. How else would she have been able to take a basket back into the compound without being searched?

  Sensing Julie’s intense interest in her story, Rachel immediately warned, “Now don’t even think of suing Maternal Uncle to make a grab for family assets!”

  Julie raised her eyebrows and chuckled. “Me? Why would I sue Maternal Uncle?”

  “I’m just saying that maybe one day when you really need money you might think about it. In that Sheng clan of yours even siblings are capable of suing each other.”

  Mother has already envisaged her own daughter as an impoverished vagabond who one day would somehow find evidence in a scrap of folkloric family legend of infants being switched at birth in order to chase after her maternal uncle’s rapidly dissipating assets.

  They walked another circuit of the garden in silence then headed back.

  Julie finally broke the silence and, with a distant smile, spoke. “I’ve always felt guilty that I have been such a burden to Second Aunt. Who can know what the future will hold? It is such a pity that someone like Second Aunt has had to waste all these years because of me.”

  After a short lull Rachel said, “I don’t like you saying …”—

  Julie thought she heard a slight pause after “I don’t like you”—

  “… as if I were some kind of superior person, aloof up on high. My life is over,” lamented Rachel. “I’ve already thought it through and will leave all the remaining funds to support you.” She then lowered her voice, continuing, “And just find a place for myself and be done with it.” She spoke so fast the last few words were barely audible.

  Rachel did not elaborate but Julie guessed she was referring to a longtime admirer like Lloyd, the English businessman. He was younger than Rachel, tall, with a red face and a long chin. Droopy eyelids framed his blue eyes. He habitually brayed with laughter before finishing what he was saying, rendering the rest of his words unintelligible and making him appear unsophisticated. He once invited Rachel and Judy to watch his team’s water polo match, and they brought Julie along. The seating at the YMCA pool was very cramped. Julie remembered the summer dusk, the chlorine smell of the pool, the frills on Rachel’s blue-gray gauze silk shirt, and Rachel’s animated laughter.

  As soon as Rachel spoke of marrying herself off, Julie could see in her mind’s eye a gloomy entrance hall with an old-fashioned dark-wood stand with hat racks on both sides, a mirror in the middle, and a space for umbrellas beneath.

  It was just like one of the houses that Julie had lived in as a child where she invariably felt like a guest, a young guest who felt uneasy standing in the hallway. But her childhood sense of security always revolved around her being a young guest.

  Rachel’s loathing of being dependent on others was now haunting her. Julie was careful to avoid displaying her delight. She quietly took in the news, but felt it was not quite right, as she did not think Rachel had made much of a sacrifice.

  Evening fell.

  “Very well, then,” said Rachel. “You may go now. No need to come tomorrow. I’ll telephone you.”

  The next time Julie visited, Rachel was doing her makeup in front of the dresser mirror and mentioned Judy for the first time. “I received a letter from your third aunt. As soon as I leave, boyfriends come out of the woodwork! As if I were holding her back. Really!” She sneered.

  The relationship between the two of them is now very strained and they only live together to save money. But Mother is away from Shanghai now and gets angry if Judy doesn’t miss her.

  Julie didn’t ask who her third aunt’s boyfriend was. But soon after her mother arrived, Julie also received a letter from Judy. Obviously, at that time her third aunt did not have a boyfriend. The letter was still written in her usual cheerful tone. She referred to Bertrand Russell’s aphorism “Pessimists say the glass is half empty, optimists say it’s half full” and wrote, “I am now enjoying a half-full life.”

  Julie did not like what she said in the letter and therefore did not comment on it when she replied. In her mind, Second Aunt and Third Aunt would always be the same way she remembered them as she stood beside them as a child for the first time watching them dress up to go ballroom dancing. Rachel put on a pale pink knee-length beaded tassel dress with a fringe. Judy wore a black dress, and a blue velvet rose bloomed on her waist. Judy, a fair-skinned and curvaceous woman, had a pretty nose, though her teeth protruded and she wore glasses. Even at that time, in a child’s eyes, they were no longer young. But the setting sun is always beautiful, and the younger generation should appreciate such memories by stepping back and not being in too much of a hurry to grow up. That was Julie’s way of showing respect for the age
d. “Youth have many long days ahead,” was something Julie heard her mother frequently intone. But now it had become an excuse, everything was put off.

  This time in Hong Kong it seemed that Rachel had decided to forego her incessant correcting of everything Julie did. After Rachel changed into her bathing suit at dusk, she said to Julie, “Come with me to the beach for a look around.”

  Is mother trying to show me how sophisticated people live? Julie felt it was her mother’s last attempt before completely giving up on her.

  As they walked side by side, Julie could not avoid the searing image of Rachel’s white bathing suit from the corner of her eye. Those pointy breasts look fake. The photos of her mother taken at the beach in southern France always showed her fully clothed, with long pants and parrot-green woven sandals covering the insteps of her now unbound feet. She still had to go into the water.

  Julie tried not to look at Rachel’s white rubber sandals. They seemed too big for her. Women with bound feet often had sticklike legs, which would make their shoes look oversized. Of course, they stuffed padding inside their shoes.

  They emerged from a small grove to a stretch of beach with light reddish-brown sand covered in a muddle of footprints. A couple splashed about in the water with their child; a whole family played with a beach ball together. They were either Cantonese or Macanese. Only Julie was wearing a long Chinese gown. As if that didn’t attract enough attention, there were always the spectacles that Judy made Julie wear before heading to Hong Kong. Julie felt like she was dressed in a body glove that separated her from the sunlight.

  “Look!” Rachel poked at a starfish with the tip of her toe.

  The patterns of round nodules set between black ridges resembled the inlay of Southeast Asian black silver bracelets, though their squelchy pustules of silvery flesh were quite revolting.

  “The worst thing about swimming is bumping into jellyfish—their stings hurt like needle pricks,” Rachel added.

  “Oh yes,” Julie chimed in, “I saw them from the gunwales.” On the boat to Hong Kong, she had seen school after school of jellyfish hovering in the water like yellow mist.

  What on earth is this huge open space for? At least a dockyard could be built here to make some use of the land. Actually, as soon as Julie had disembarked from the bus, she excitedly imagined the scene that confronted her—thick clusters of Japanese jasmine shrubs beside the macadam road, like plump piles of green leaves on the ground, the sound of insects chirping at the end of the day, the scent of jasmine wafting through the air, and a line of vase-shaped white granite balustrades visible through the shrubs—surely this was like the seaside in southern France. But for some strange reason, whenever she was with her mother everything became dull.

  “Let’s sit here,” said Rachel pointing to a white rock by the edge of the small grove.

  Mosquitoes unleashed a ferocious attack. Mustn’t scratch the mosquito bites in public. But in the end, she couldn’t refrain from scratching her calf. “There are a lot of mosquitoes,” she complained.

  “They’re not mosquitoes,” Rachel corrected. “Sand flies. Tiny little sand flies.”

  “Their bites are terribly itchy. If I’d known, I would have worn socks.” Socks at the beach?

  Julie suppressed the urge to scratch for an eternity.

  Suddenly a man surged forth out of the water. Against the backdrop of the ash-gray sea at dusk, the image was in that instant exceptionally clear: his torso rose from the water like a pure white stallion, a lock of dark hair clinging to the space between his eyebrows like a tuft of black on a white horse’s mane. It was a slightly licentious image, perhaps because it triggered an association with pubic hair.

  The man raised his hand high and called out a greeting. Rachel stood up, turned to Julie, and said, “Very well, then. You may go now.”

  Julie stood up and acquiesced to the command, but she did not want to appear to rush off in a hurry. She observed Rachel plodding unsteadily into the sea with her oversized white rubber sandals splashing the water. The person waiting for her in the sea was probably a young Englishman.

  Was he the one who had driven Rachel to the school the other day?

  Julie trudged back through the wooded area. She has not yet left Hong Kong because she must want to have a bit of fun for a few days, one last fling before finding that “place” for herself. What a pity Rachel had tarried so long and now suddenly looks old. Julie felt sorry for her. Would her suitor-in-waiting be disappointed when he finally saw her face-to-face?

  When she returned that evening, Julie rang the dormitory doorbell. A searchlight on the other side of the harbor suddenly came on, illuminating the little cream-colored door canopy of the dormitory high atop the hill and two pairs of vase-shaped pillars. She felt she was standing inside the niche of a small shrine, bathed from head to toe in a blue mist. She froze, turning her startled half-smiling face to look across towards the Kowloon peninsula on the other side of the harbor.

  The searchlight stayed trained on her. What can they possibly think they have seen? Such stupidity. She was bewildered. Finally, the beam of light moved away, like wide stripes drawn with chalk on the night sky by a lazy hand, sometimes crossing other stripes, sometimes staying parallel.

  But it all happened in just a few seconds. A sister opened the door into the darkened entrance hall. It was like coming home after watching a sentimental movie, the same feeling of strangeness that she felt when returning to her childhood home: everything became smaller, shorter, and older. She experienced a sense of rapture.

  On another day at Repulse Bay, Rachel again took Julie for a walk in the garden. “I want to tell you about something strange that happened,” said Rachel casually, in a low voice. “Someone searched through my belongings.”

  “Who?” asked Julie softly, taken aback.

  “The police, of course. And not just once. After they ransack my luggage they always put everything back in place. I told Nancy and the others but they don’t believe me. Do you think I can’t tell if someone has interfered with my belongings?”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Clearly it’s because they see a single woman and assume suspicious behavior. They suspect I’m a spy.”

  Julie couldn’t help but feel a flutter of pride. Of course—they found Rachel mysterious; a black-haired Marlene Dietrich.

  “It’s infuriating that these people are such cowards. The plan was that we would travel together, watch out for one another, and bring a little bit extra back with us to sell, because they are well connected and Dr. Yang is a medical doctor, after all. When you encounter this sort of thing you get to see what people are really like.” She sighed as she broke into a bitter smile.

  Julie was about to say that everything would be all right because she came with Ambassador Pi, but after she heard Rachel out she thought it best to keep quiet.

  “You’d better not come for a few days.”

  That was after the incident with the eight hundred dollars. Not visiting for a few days suited Julie just fine.

  On the next visit, Rachel was packing her bags. Julie passed things back and forth from the sidelines but felt she was unable to be of use so she might as well sit down and watch.

  “Hey,” said Rachel, suddenly grumpy, “help me press down on this.” She was packing a sewing machine, tying ropes around it. Rachel wanted Julie to press down firmly on a knot, and then told her to let go. The sewing machine bucked like a steer and only with great difficulty was it subdued.

  Miss Hsiang came and sat for a while. She was very quiet and spoke softly and slowly, as if she were terrified of offending Rachel.

  “Miss Hsiang and her companion are not leaving Hong Kong,” said Rachel after Miss Hsiang had left the room. “She has linked up with Mr. Pi. I suppose it’s a good thing because she was looking for someone to marry. They plan to settle in Hong Kong.”

  Again, Julie did not ask Rachel where she was going. She must be traveling by sea. Rachel had only recently
announced she intended to find a “place” for herself and now it appeared she was racing to put her words into action. Julie recalled hearing that Lloyd was in Singapore.

  Rachel didn’t mention the espionage incident again and Julie was afraid to ask, not wanting to provoke another tirade.

  “In an emergency you can ask Rick for assistance. He’s at your school. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him. He teaches in the medical faculty.”

  “Don’t bother him for no reason.” She paused, then added, “Just tell him I’m your aunt.”

  “Yes.”

  Rachel clearly was not angry with Julie.

  Was it because Nancy and her husband and Mr. Pi had made her feel so bitterly disappointed? Especially now that Mr. Pi had taken up with Miss Hsiang and seems to have abandoned Rachel. That didn’t quite make sense. If she really was jealous of Mr. Pi and Miss Hsiang, she would never show it. And Miss Hsiang would be embarrassed to reveal that she was fearful of enraging Rachel.

  So who was Rachel angry with? Could she be angry with the young man at the beach for not helping her? It was just a chance encounter with a stranger. You can’t really blame him for not agreeing to vouch for her. Moreover, she didn’t have to be questioned at the police station, it was just a secret investigation. And then there was Rick. It’s not as if there were no Englishmen who could act as her guarantor, and Rick is a local university lecturer, though it was the summer holidays and he might be out of Hong Kong.

  Julie did not attempt to find the answers.

  The day of Rachel’s departure Julie went to the Repulse Bay Hotel to say goodbye. It was raining heavily. The hotel bus overflowed with people. Julie didn’t know if they were traveling with Rachel or just seeing her off, making up for their earlier coldness with exceptional warmth, chatting and laughing as they crowded around her.

  Rachel broke away from the crowd to lean out the window and say impatiently, “Very well, then, you may go now,” as if to suggest that Julie hadn’t really wanted to come and see her mother off at all.